Welcome to “HelpNDoc Insights and Articles”, your dedicated hub for all things related to HelpNDoc, presented in thoughtful, in-depth articles. Here, we explore the breadth and depth of the software, shedding light on its features, offering tips and tricks, and providing insights on how to best leverage HelpNDoc to create compelling and comprehensive documentation. Our articles range from beginner’s guides and how-tos to expert advice and deep dives into advanced features. For those who prefer a more hands-on learning experience, we have a series of step-by-step guides available both as easy-to-follow text and engaging video content. Whether you’re a first-time user or an experienced documentation specialist, our goal is to empower you with knowledge and inspire you to make the most of HelpNDoc. Dive in to discover, learn, and enhance your understanding of this powerful tool.
We were asked on FaceBook if it was possible to define a favicon to a HTML help build generated by HelpNDoc. This is a great question and the short answer is yes, absolutely, thanks to HelpNDoc’s powerful template system. Let’s see how this can be done by first creating our favicon, then our own custom template which will use that favicon
Once you've written your help file or documentation web-site, you'd usually like to be able to integrate it with your existing products: when users are having difficulties performing an action, they should be able to launch the help file and be presented with the correct associated topic explaining that specific action. For that purpose, Help Authoring Tools such as HelpNDoc provide two unique identifiers for each topic: an alpha-numeric Help ID and a numeric Help Context number. This makes it possible to reach a specific topic from your software application or web-site. But as a technical writer, you probably won't be in charge of "wiring" that application or web-site with the help file and you'd rather send a list of topic identifiers to the developers in charge. Thanks to HelpNDoc's very powerful script editor, you can easily do that!
HelpNDoc is so easy to use that a complete multi-format and multi-device documentation can be produced in just a few minutes after downloading and trying HelpNDoc for the first time thanks to its intuitive user interface and Microsoft Word-like topic editor. It is also extremely powerful and provides many advanced tools to simplify and speed-up the creation of amazing help files and manuals. One of those advanced feature is the script editor which lets you manipulate HelpNDoc through a scripting language. Let's see how the script editor can help you create the most useful help files in the shortest amount of time possible
Thanks to HelpNDoc's powerful conditional generation feature and its amazing build system, it is easier and faster than ever to produce multiple variations of a master documentation. Just imagine writing a complete help file, manual, book or documentation and then choosing which parts to include in each final product: you'll begin to understand how powerful this feature can be to provide different variations of your master documentation to multiple clients, customers, partners... Read on to learn how to effectively use HelpNDoc's conditional generation system.
YouTube videos are extremely useful to easily share an animated content such as a step-by-step guide or an how-to movie. It is worth considering adding a YouTube video in an HTML based documentation, such as a CHM help file, to showcase a procedure and make it more easily and rapidly understandable by the end-user. As an added advantage, the video file won't be embedded in the final documentation but streamed directly from YouTube, thus lowering the final documentation's size. Let's see how fast and easy it is to add a YouTube video to a CHM help file or an HTML documentation using HelpNDoc
Warning! Some information and techniques detailed on this page may be out of date. For more up-to-date information on this topic, we recommend that you check the following page: Import WinHelp HLP files, Google Analytics support in HTML documentation and more in HelpNDoc 5.9. Google Analytics (GA) is a free service offered by Google which can track various anonymous information about users visiting a web-site, such as which page have many views and for how long.
When HelpNDoc generates an HTML documentation, the usual process is to generate it to a local disk drive, review it, then upload it to the web-server where it will be accessible for the end-user. However, when testing the locally generated documentation using Microsoft Internet Explorer, you might notice a broken tables of contents at first, as well as a notification message at the top of the screen mentioning that "To help protect you security, Internet Explorer has restricted this webpage from running scripts or ActiveX controls that could access your computer. Click here for options..." as shown on the following screen-shot
A new review from George Norman at FindMySoft.com finds HelpNDoc powerful, easy and safe to install. "If you decide to download and install the IBE Software-developed application HelpNDoc on your system, you will enjoy the functionality of an easy to use, powerful and intuitive tool to create help files" says the review before pointing out that HelpNDoc is "free of charge. This means you can get HelpNDoc, enjoy the functionality it provides, and keep your hard earned money in your pocket"
Using the Freeware Edition of HelpNDoc, you can create a Compiled HTML Help Format (CHM) table of contents in a mater of seconds, either by freely typing it, importing one from an existing CHM help file or using HelpNDoc's interface to position the topics. This article presents the steps involved to easily and rapidly create a complete and structured table of content for your documentations
The HelpNDoc help authoring environment can export flash SWF and FLV files in the generated CHM and HTML documentation. To do so, Flash files must first be included in HelpNDoc's library, a placeholder for various files related to your documentation, then inserted in one or multiple help topics